Stop holding on to those old photos.
The Three Gorges of the Yangtze River and Qinghai Lake are beautiful, but they are other people’s summers.
When you look at those "8 Excellent Articles" over and over again, at a certain moment, you will feel that they are so beautiful that they are slightly distant, as if they are the kind of model essays in textbooks, right?
This summer, head north.
Go to the Northeast.
Not to see the snow, but to escape the heat.
Yes, you heard it right. The Northeast you know in your mind, where dripping water can turn into ice, is only 22°C in summer. It looks like a huge building covered with lots of green plants. In fact, it is like a large natural air-conditioned room surrounded by thick green moss.
Summer in the Northeast, why?
It is the sea of forests, an oxygen bar, and a willful sky that is only willing to be completely dark at 2 o'clock in the middle of the night.
When many people mention traveling to the Northeast, they still think of the ice and snow sculptures in the Ice and Snow World.
But now the Northeast has long been different.
High-speed trains that stretch like capillaries, as many planes as buses, "airdrop" a large group of people who have been wilted by the high temperature in the south to this place with a cool atmosphere.
Changbai Mountain Top, waiting for a gust of wind
You said you read the introduction to Tianchi. Isn’t it just a pool of water?
However, you have to stand in person at that place with an altitude of more than 2,000 meters, wrapped in a rented cotton coat, shivering from the cold in the summer, and then have to wait eagerly for the wind that can blow away the fog.
The locals say that "nine times out of ten we never see you again", but what if you are that "one"?
That feeling is more exciting than any fixed number.
When you come down from Tianchi, don’t leave in a hurry.
The small town of Erdaobaihe is so slow that you can hear your own heartbeat.
The river in the town is said to never freeze due to geothermal heat. In summer mornings, mist lingers on the river, just like a mysterious entrance described in "Tomb Raiders".
Yichun, throw yourself into "forest bathing"
If Changbai Mountain belongs to the kind of place that everyone praises like a lady, then Yichun is the kind of place that is hidden in the deep boudoir like the jade of a small family, and its beauty is even more pure.
There are no attractions that must be visited here, only endless tree-lined planks.
Walking there is called "forest bathing" as the locals call it. It is not a bath. What is being washed is not normal dirt and the like. What is being washed there is the lungs, eyes, and brain.
Those red pines are so high that you have to tilt your neck to see the top.
The sun shines through the gaps in the leaves, dappled.
There is a soft road paved with pine needles under your feet, and the only sounds in your ears are the wind and the chirping of birds.
Occasionally, a little squirrel will jump out quickly. It is not afraid of people at all. It has black eyes and stares straight at you, as if asking: Hey, do you have any melon seeds?
Bargaining with Russian aunts at the morning market on the border between China and Russia
The best thing is to go to Heihe.
There is a morning market there, known as "the most international vegetable market in Northeast China".
It's dawning early (in Northeastern summer, the sky is getting brighter early). At five o'clock in the morning, in the steaming steam, the aroma from the leek box is intertwined with the Russian dialogue.
"Get (три) yuan!" "Shao Hala!"
You hold the RMB and gesture with a blond Russian aunt to buy a big leba.
This feeling is more vivid, more energetic, more real, more interesting, and more charming than if you spend a lot of money to go to a small European town!
In the evening, take a boat ride on Heilongjiang.
There is actually another country on the other side. The wind on the boat is cool, blowing the Russian folk song called "Katyusha". You are holding the kvass you just bought from the morning market in your hand. At that moment, you can't tell whether you are at home or abroad. You just feel that these earthly fireworks are really worth it.
Wudalianchi, stepping on the volcano underfoot
There is another place called Wudalianchi.
It sounds like five pools, but in fact they are the traces left after the eruption of 14 volcanoes.
Walking among the sea of turning stones, the black volcanic rocks are showing their teeth and claws. Have you ever imagined that three hundred years ago this place was still surging with magma.
At this moment, unknown small wild flowers were blooming in the cracks of the stones, and cold mineral water was bubbling out. The locals took the bottles and drank them directly, claiming that it could cure diseases.
You can experience a "mineral mud mask" here. It is purely natural. The volcanic mud is applied on the face and has a cooling feeling. It is more irritating than big-name skin care products.
## Cold noodles, Guobao Pork and Ginseng Milk
Don’t think that Northeast China only has pork stewed vermicelli.
In Yanji, you can eat eight meals a day.
In the morning, there is the freshly pressed cold noodles with icy crust, which has a sweet and sour taste, which can make people feel excited all of a sudden; at noon, there is the kind of pot pork that is crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, and it has to be of the sweet and sour sauce type. , one bite is so sour that you feel like you are doing a somersault; at night, you have to find a place to drink a bowl of ginseng chicken soup, in which the belly of the chicken is stuffed full of glutinous rice, and the soup is so delicious that your eyebrows will fall off.
Hey, pay attention, there is a drink called "ginseng milk" at the foot of Changbai Mountain. The price is about ten or fifteen yuan per bottle. When you drink it, there will be an elegant, inexplicable, earthy taste, but this is authentic and has the unique flavor of the mountains!
Don't just look, stay
In the past, traveling was called "sightseeing", where you would just walk around and see the flowers, get off the car and take pictures.
Now the Northeastern people want you to "live in", live down, and slow down.
Find a B&B renovated from a forest farm, with the forest right outside the window.
Follow the locals to practice Tai Chi in the morning, go into the forest to collect some mushrooms in the morning (even though you may not be able to tell whether they are edible), sit in the yard in the afternoon and watch the stars at night.
The real sense of "living somewhere else" is much more luxurious than staying in a five-star hotel.
You may meet an enthusiastic boss in a farmhouse who insists on dragging you to sit down and drink two glasses of wine with the freshly braised pork ribs.
After drinking a few glasses of wine, he began to tell you about the forest farm back then, and how the forest slowly recovered after the logging stopped.
This is the real “attraction” of summer in Northeast China.
Not the names carved on stone, not the entries in Baidu Encyclopedia.
It’s the wind at 22 degrees Celsius, the deep breath with the scent of pine resin, the too dazzling sunshine outside at four o’clock in the morning, and the strangers holding hands and dancing around the bonfire at night.
Stop asking.
The question is, book a ticket and go north.
Go and see that, it’s not the Northeast you think of.
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